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Saint Thomas Aquinas

Thursday, September 28, 2017

This is a great laugh. Sorry this is now getting ridiculous. Pope Francis, who clearly has no idea what Thomsitic theology is, is now claiming that his troubled document, Amoris Laetitia is a Thomistic document. You can't make this stuff up! He says, "...some maintain that there is no Catholic morality underlying Amoris Laetitia, or at least, no sure morality. I want to repeat clearly that the morality of Amoris Laetitia is Thomist, the morality of the great Thomas. You can speak of it with a great theologian, one of the best today and one of the most mature, Cardinal Schönborn." As we also know, Schönborn is no Thomist either, as for his theological maturity, well....

I Don't Think So!

This is another case of the emperor's new clothes. This is now going to be the mantra going forward for everything the modernists are going to try and push on us. Say it over and over again and everyone will believe it. All I read are Thomistic theology books, I know what the basics of Thomistic morality are, and I can say with complete confidence, that Amoris concerning Pope Francis' accompanying teaching encouraging Communion for the divorced and remarried is not Thomistic. In fact, has he ever read the Summa? The answer is clear as day if he were to actually read it. What does Thomas himself say about receiving communion if a person be known publicly to be in serious sin? He says, "A distinction must be made among sinners: some are secret; others are notorious, either from evidence of the fact, as public usurers, or public robbers, or from being denounced as evil men by some ecclesiastical or civil tribunal. Therefore Holy Communion ought not to be given to open sinners when they ask for it." This obviously refers to most of the divorced and remarried since they are publicly known to be living and having relations with someone other than their spouse. Therefore in these cases they should be denied Holy Communion.

What about a case where someone is in serious sin and no one knows about it except the priest? Should the priest give a divorced and remarried person who just moved from across the country Communion, if he is the only one who knows they are living in sin? Thomas says yes if the sin be absolutely private, although the priest should warn them and their parishioners openly that these types of sinners should not receive it because it would be a detriment to their souls. Notice, Thomas never encourages someone in serious sin to receive Holy Communion. He says, "But if they be not open sinners, but occult, the Holy Communion should not be denied them if they ask for it. For since every Christian, from the fact that he is baptized, is admitted to the Lord's table, he may not be robbed of his right, except from some open cause. Hence on 1 Corinthians 5:11, "If he who is called a brother among you," etc., Augustine's gloss remarks: "We cannot inhibit any person from Communion, except he has openly confessed, or has been named and convicted by some ecclesiastical or lay tribunal." Nevertheless a priest who has knowledge of the crime can privately warn the secret sinner, or warn all openly in public, from approaching the Lord's table, until they have repented of their sins and have been reconciled to the Church; because after repentance and reconciliation, Communion must not be refused even to public sinners, especially in the hour of death.... it is worse for the secret sinner to sin mortally in taking the body of Christ," So if the person is not resolved to quit committing the sin, they should not receive Our Lord Thomas makes this clear, yet if it is absolutely private, to their own detriment they could receive it.

So the Pope Francis is wrong any way you go here concerning a person having relations with someone other than his or her spouse with no firm purpose of amendment. He is out of his mind if he is going to claim Thomas as his moral support for encouraging unrepentant sinners to approach the the Lord's Table. The Church's age old teaching that someone who is having marital relations with someone they are not married to, should not receive Holy Communion, is Thomistic and stands as the teaching of the Church. To think that he is now going to try and pass this confusing mess off as Thomistic and hi-jack Thomistic theology is really upsetting to say the least. For those who actually want to read what Thomas has to say on the matter should go here and read it. Question 80, Article 6.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

In this supreme moment of need of the Church, the one who should speak will fall silent!” Prophesy from Our Lady of Good Success, Quito, Ecuador

A couple of years ago I had the privilege of visiting the Conceptionist Convent in Quito, Ecuador where the apparitions of Our Lady of Good Success appeared to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres. It was a life changing experience seeing the body of Mother Mariana and participating in the procession carrying Our Lady of Good Success. It was also very enlightening to speak to the local Catholics who are very involved with the convent and are very familiar with the prophesies of Our Lady of Good Success. I was able to sit down at the local coffee shop and chat about these apparitions. One of the discussions was on the prophesy of the "one" who should speak and will fall silent.

Although we could not be certain that this is referring to Francis, the prophesy does fit quite well if it is read in context of the rest of the prophesies, which refer to our time, most importantly concerning the assault on marriage and purity. "In those times will be an atmosphere full of the spirit of impurity which, by way of an evil sea run through the streets, squares and public places with an amazing freedom..." As we know there is a great siege upon us throughout the world regarding impurity and a heightened rebellious attitude towards marriage. "As for the Sacrament of Matrimony, which symbolizes the union of Christ with the Church, will be attacked and profaned in every sense of the word."

We have seen this confusion enter into the Church itself and we must examine the primary cause, especially in its escalation over the past few years. It is no secret that since Pope Francis has taken the seat of Peter confusion has escalated to an unprecedented level in the Church concerning marriage. His document Amoris Leatitia and his accompanying public teaching has not only caused mass confusion in the Church, it is spreading the heretical idea that one can with full knowledge remain in serious sin and yet receive Holy Communion. Pope Francis knows the bishops conferences who are doing this, and he has approved this act by a letter to the Argentine bishops. It does not take a scholar to see the error. Many liberal writers and commentators are defending the Francis agenda claiming that those who are opposing it are insignificant, Pharisaical, and rigid conservatives who are not willing to follow the Holy Spirit in updating the Church's teaching. Those who understand this tactic see it for what it is, modernism.

Back to the prophesy. Pope Francis has now been approached six times by clergy and laity charitably asking him to clarify his document and affirm the Church's definitive teaching on the matter. As we know, despite these six petitions we have....silence. Thus the one who should obviously speak is remaining silent, allowing the assault on the Sacraments of Marriage, Confession and the Eucharist to continue. It is important to recognize the avalanche of profanation that comes from this one noxious error, it effects not only the Sacrament of Marriage, but it also trivializes the Sacrament of Confession, being that there is no firm purpose of amendment, and the Eucharist, since it is being received unworthily. Obviously I have no idea how all of this is going to play out with Francis in the future. As we know many controversies have arose in the Church over the centuries where popes have been deposed, removed, proclaimed anti-popes years after their occupancy. There have been horrible popes who have been lost under the dust of history. Who knows what the future holds. We are in another unique time in the Church where the "one" who appears to be the one who should be speaking, is remaining silent when asked to uphold the perennial teaching of the Church. In the end we know what the outcome will be, God's truth will triumph. However, it will require of those souls who remain faithful to suffer much. As the one who should speak remains silent, we must prepare to persevere.

"At that time there will be great calamities, physical, public and private. The small number of souls in which the cult of faith and virtue is preserved will undergo cruel and unspeakable suffering, the pair that prolonged martyrdom. Many of them go down to the grave by the violence of suffering and will be counted as martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the Church and for the Fatherland. To free others from the slavery of these heresies, those who have the merciful love of my Most Holy Son will need great strength of will, perseverance, courage, and confidence in God." Our Lady of Good Success

Monday, September 25, 2017

By words, deeds, and omissions, and by passages of the document 'Amoris
laetitia,' Your Holiness has upheld, directly or indirectly, and, with what degree of awareness we do not seek to judge, both by public office and by private act propagated in the Church the following false and heretical propositions:

1. "A justified person has not the strength with God’s grace to carry out the objective demands of the divine law, as though any of the commandments of God are impossible for the justified; or as meaning that God’s grace, when it produces justification in an individual, does not invariably and of its nature produce conversion from all serious sin, or is not sufficient for conversion from all serious sin."

2. "Christians who have obtained a civil divorce from the spouse to whom they are validly married and have contracted a civil marriage with some other person during the lifetime of their spouse, who live 'more uxorio' with their civil partner, and who choose to remain in this state with full knowledge of the nature of their act and full consent of the will to that act, are not necessarily in a state of mortal sin, and can receive sanctifying grace and grow in charity."

3. "A Christian believer can have full knowledge of a divine law and voluntarily choose to break it in a serious matter, but not be in a state of mortal sin as a result of this action."

4. "A person is able, while he obeys a divine prohibition, to sin against God by that very act of obedience."

5. "Conscience can truly and rightly judge that sexual acts between persons who have contracted a civil marriage with each other, although one or both of them is sacramentally married to another person, can sometimes be morally right or requested or even commanded by God."

6. "Moral principles and moral truths contained in divine revelation and in the natural law do not include negative prohibitions that absolutely forbid particular kinds of action, inasmuch as these are always gravely unlawful on account of their object."

7. "Our Lord Jesus Christ wills that the Church abandon her perennial discipline of refusing the Eucharist to the divorced and remarried and of refusing absolution to the divorced and remarried who do not express contrition for their state of life and a firm purpose of amendment with regard to it."

I extend my congratulations and gratitude to the originators of the Correction and I wish to have my name added to the list of those individuals who agree with the content of the Correction and want to be identified with it.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

A reminder that EWTN will broadcast live the Pontifical Latin Mass which His Excellency Bishop Joseph Perry will celebrate at the Cathedral Basilica of Ss Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and the 10th Anniversary of Summorum Pontificum.

Sacred music for the Mass will include Mozart’s Missa Brevis in C-major, (the “Sparrow” Mass), Elgar’s Ecce Sacerdos Magnus, Monteverdi’s Adoramus te, and John Blow’s Salvator Mundi, in addition to the Gregorian chants.

Live Mass!

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